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I only recently broke free of iOS3.x for Flower Garden, so I’m finally adding all the features I had been itching to add that required higher OS support. I had already added some iOS4+ features, but I was keeping them to a minimum because it’s always a huge cause of bugs to target multiple versions of the OS at once.

One of the first features I looked into adding was multisample antialiasing (MSAA) support for OpenGL, which was originally introduced in iOS 4.0. The geometry generated for the petals in Flower Garden is fairly high contrast, and since it’s not like the textures were carefully created and laid out by an artist, the result is pretty bad aliasing around the edges. Perfect candidate for multisampling! Continue reading →

No, this is not an announcement of my next game (I wish). Rather, it’s a brain dump of my struggle with the process. It seems that in the game development community we often share the process of making a game and how it did afterwards. But it’s rare having some insight into what goes on before the project gets started. Where do ideas come from? Why do we pick one and not another? These are semi-coherent notes about the things I’m struggling with right now. Continue reading →

Wether you want it or not, Xcode 4 is around to stay when it comes to iOS development. I’ve been happily comfortable with Xcode 3 for quite a while, and my first impressions of Xcode 4 left me completely cold. However, support for Xcode 3 will soon go away, so I need to get ready for the inevitable transition. Maybe I was just having a bad day when I looked at Xcode 4 for the first day. Or maybe my nightmares finally came true and I’ll be forced to look for an alternative IDE. Which one is it? Read on to find out. Continue reading →

Unlike a lot of console and PC games, most mobile and web games keep evolving over time [1]. It’s up to a game’s designers to ultimately decide how to change and improve the game, but the more data about players’ habits they have, the more informed a decision they’ll be able to make. Having good analytics on iOS games is simply essential these days. Continue reading →

About 48 hours ago, I participated in the 360iDev Game Jam. I’m still recovering from the sleep deprivation and caffeine excesses, but here are some random thoughts about the game jam and why I highly recommend the experience to all developers.

This was my third 360iDev Game Jam, and it gets better all the time. It’s great to see that it has become a 360iDev tradition, and that the number of people participating is going up every time. The last couple of times we had one invited guest to participate remotely (and preside over everybody else in the big videoscreen), but this time we opened it up so anybody, anywhere in the world could join us and participate in the updates and discussions through the web site (big thanks for Mike Berg for all the excellent work on the web site!).

What’s The Point

Some people don’t understand what the point of the game jam is. Other people see the value in it, but disagree with what other people see. The point of a game jam is the same as a jamming music session: To create something while surrounded by other developers and feed off each other’s energy and enthusiasm.

In addition to the jamming aspect of it, different people have different goals, and they’re all just as good and valuable:

Trying a new game idea

Learning a new API or technique

Making a finished product

Starting something new

Being totally experimental

Stretching their comfort zone

There were even people using the game jam as a means to make progress in their own game or app they had already started. It’s a bit far from the original intent, but why not? It’s the jamming part that is the most important.

I was glad to see that most people decided to work the theme (“changing the world”) in the game somehow. I definitely find that having some constraints helps me focus and be more creative at the same time.

One of the most attractive aspects of a game jam for me is that it’s a very focused, but very short effort. Yes, it sounds epic: “A full night of pizza, coffee, and coding…” but it’s only 8-10 hours. That means the cost of “failure” is minimal. It’s about a work day. That’s it. So that means it’s possible to try new, risky, experimental things, and, most importantly, be OK if they don’t work out. You don’t learn by succeeding at everything.

So instead, Miguel and I paired up again, but with a twist: He would do all the programming and I would do all the art. How’s that for crazy? Actually, he’s in a lot better shape because he’s a good programmer in addition to being a great artist. Me, on the other hand, I can barely find my way around in Photoshop to copy and paste images from Google Images, so this was definitely going to be way out of my comfort zone.

As you can expect, we didn’t make as much progress as we had hoped. On the other hand, I never had more fun or learned more new things at a game jam before! It helped a lot that I wasn’t just flailing around with Photoshop, but that Miguel was there giving me pointers and showing me what the right way of doing things was. I went from not knowing that there was such a thing as a path tool, to becoming relatively proficient with it over the course of the night. It was like drinking a potion of +5 to Photoshop skills.

Apart from learning a lot, I also developed an even deeper appreciation and admiration of game artists. I knew it wasn’t easy stuff and that you needed a lot of talent. What I wasn’t quite fully appreciating is how technically involved art creation is! It’s very different from traditional painting and drawing, and it’s very highly technical. In a way, it’s almost like 3D modeling in how it requires mastery of a very complex tool and you need to work on very small parts for a long time.

Here’s a screenshot of the game showing all the assets I created during the jam:

Lessons Learned

Some random, unsorted, lessons learned from this jam:

Come ready with an empty project you can start working on. The jam is not the time when you want to start stripping out old code. I learned that one in my first game jam, but didn’t come prepared with an iPad project (Hint: the iPhone -> iPad automatic conversion sucks–does anything automatic not suck?).

Everything takes longer than you think. If you think you’ll just finish the game by morning, it’s probably too big. Choose something smaller.

Learning stuff during the jam is great. Just adjust expectations about what you’ll create (we knew this going in, but still caught us by surprise).

Take a moment to interact with the people around you. We’re all in a hurry to make something awesome, but take some time to talk to other developers. It’s well worth it, and makes the long night more bearable (and energizes you more).

Pizza and coffee is a killer combination. I suspect I might never have to go to sleep if I keep the two in balance ;-b

When wifi sucks, it’s hard to take the time to post updates or read other people’s updates.

Hotel wifi always sucks.

The jam is not a popularity contest. Sure, it’s great to show it off the next day, but make sure you create what you want for yourself and not based on what will demo best the next day.

If you haven’t done a game jam, you should. I strongly suggest collaborating with at least one other person, and doing it live with a bunch of other developers. The energy is incredible and it will be an experience you’ll learn a lot from and will remember for a long time.

This post is part of iDevBlogADay, a group of indie iPhone development blogs featuring two posts per day. You can keep up with iDevBlogADay through the web site, RSS feed, or Twitter. This will be my last post for iDevBlogADay for a while (need to give those people in the massive waiting list a chance!), but I’ll definitely continue posting regularly.